I just finished 6 months of a new trauma therapy and my therapist and I ended as we were getting nowhere. This keeps happening to me. My wound is too deep and ingrained that it is unworkable. I'm scared, but trying to do this on my own. Has anyone else have this happen? Y
Years and years and nothing new coming out of therapy world that helps me. I know its me, I know myself too well and Noone can find any new revelation that I don't already know. No technique that resonates with me. Treatment resistant. I will get lots of people suggesting things to do for myself. With all due respect, I just want to know if anyone else faces or faced this? I do NOT unconsciously want to be remain as I am. My last therapist 100 percent understood me but she's as clueless as I am as to what to do. She knows this is not intentional on my part. I'm a knowledgeable and insightful person, not naive.
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samack
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From experience in can say you have to be willing and ready to face your deepest fears and scars. Although I was not doing anything conciously, I eventually realized that I have to be completely vulnerable. I am the type that has everything figured out. I am extremely knowlegable and insightful and know a lot about mental health. That's where the problem was! Coming and presenting everything to my therapist wasn't helping, I could predict exactly all the connections... But when I learned to just talk raw emotions I was able to heal. It was hard and the way I acheived this was by writing (never liked writing, and never used writing as a form of emotional expression previously). I'd purposely write nights when I was feeling sad. I'd just start writing. Anything. About day or memory. And let my heart take me to the most vulnerable places. I was tired and at that hour my emotions were writing. I didn't think. When done I'd email to my therapist immediately (usually late at night) before I'd get into a proper headspace. I didn't have time to think, reread, check spelling.... This was extremely unnatural for me. I wouldn't even read back most times. My therapist would read it either before our sessions if she had time or else as soon as I came in and from there I made progress.This was my experience and it has helped me so so much. I don't really know. Maybe there are some out of the box options.
Thank you for your thoughtful reply. Actually I am telling everything there is to tell. Its pretty raw I think I know too much about myself and its an impediment to getting better. I have been therapized so I am a professional client. additionally I trained as a therapist, read 100s of current theories and have tried many. Its tough.
I hear, sounds really hard. I wish I mad the magic answer and cure. I hope that you can heal.Although different, I have many ingrained fears that stem from trauma that I can't seem to break. Logically and mentally I don't believe in those fears anymore. I believe I can and will marry someone who will love me. Yet, the fears and belief that I couldn't ever get married after I got a devestating diagnosis at a young age still follows me emotionally. I fully believe I will get married and recognize that my fear was based on stupidity especially since the diagnosis was celiac! (I just can't eat gluten😂) but emotionally apprantly I can't get past it because I'm engaging in a lot of self sabatage and also coming up with more reasons why I can't date (why date if I won't get married).
Don't know where this comes in I just wanted to share
That sounds so simple on paper but its not. Thats how I feel. I don't believe I'm going to heal due to a lifetime of failure. That is so deeply rooted in me. Nothing is working. When my trauma spilled out at once, it was too much to handle. I no longer functioned. 4 1/2 years later, I'm still paralyzed. I have no vision for a satisfying future. I cant see it. I cant believe it. Cognitive work makes me roll my eyes. I'm glad you shared with me.
I’ve been in and out of therapy since childhood. Some therapists were a better fit than others. Some techniques seemed to help, while others not so much. Now here I am, 26 years into my therapy journey and I have a new therapist who has, in a relatively short amount of time, helped me find greater peace and understanding that just about anything in the last 10 years.
I’m a very intelligent person. I have several advanced degrees, I am in a field in which I study human behavior, and in general, I am very cerebral in my daily life. I say these things only because I get the impression you’re very similar. What I recently realized - with the help of my new therapist - was that my brain created an identity that operates almost entirely in logic and data. This identity essentially took over my life. It protected me from having to deal with my trauma - which, when brought up, reduces me to a crying heap. It allowed me to take care of my loved ones when they were dying in my arms. It allowed me to endure abuse - hide it - and continue to get my work done so that I looked like a well-adjusted, functional and capable person. For a long time I thought that this was just “who I was and how I thought.”
What I realized is that the hyper-cerebral part of me is a coping mechanism. It protects me from feeling the pain and suffering in my past (and present; really, it protects me from feeling. Hard stop.). Sometimes this is good; even necessary. But even though I can get through the day to day and I have been able to heal some of the negative thought patterns that have been ingrained over the years, the logical identity keeps me stuck too. It sees no point in reliving pain or trauma because we ultimately can’t change it and feeling it only reduces us to being a mess - or places me at risk of feeling self pity, which it finds to be an utterly loathsome emotion. Logic can also be very critical and negative. It doesn’t allow me to imagine a new life or a better life when every previous effort to create one has been a spectacular failure. After all, it runs on data inputs, so if every previous attempt failed, it will tell me I will fail … over and over again.
Now that I know about this logical coping mechanism I am starting to work past it. I recognize it’s there and thank it for all it has done to protect me and move me forward, but I can also suspend it now - at least long enough to start dealing with some of the trauma that led to this place. Eventually, when it feels my system has been sad for too long or gets to too scary a place, it will take over again. The funny thing that I am acutely aware of this and I can tell when logic takes over or steps back. This coping mechanism has been around so long and is so ingrained that healing is likely to be something of a negotiation - ha. But it’s happening now - slowly or not.
You should know, I don’t have a dissociative identity disorder. However, it’s easiest for me to explain this particular coping mechanism as if it’s an identity. Provided your training, intellect, and previous negative experience bringing up your trauma only to be retraumatized by it, my sense is that you have developed a coping mechanism that prevents you from getting to the places that you’d need to tap into in order to heal. In this case, two things need to align in order for you to find your healing. 1. You need to be in “a moment of ripeness” (pardon the international conflict negotiation phrase) - which refers to a moment/time when you are capable of making the choices, giving the trust, and doing the work to find resolution/healing. We aren’t always in that place. Sometimes we don’t feel safe enough to be there, or we don’t feel we have time; we don’t feel ready or willing. And it’s not as if it’s an “ah ha” moment. But it’s worth your ongoing efforts because you never know when your system might find its moment. 2. You need a therapist that can speak to your system in a way it responds to… and it’s not always the most decorated therapist or the one with whom you are most comfortable. It’s the one who can tap in where others meet a wall. (Ha. To be honest, when my new therapist started wanting to “talk to the place within me that was feeling angry” - I was like, “oh dear heavens I’m never gonna get anywhere with this nonsense”. But I tried it because I was desperate to try anything that might help. And f#@&!! if it didn’t actually make sense enough to work.
I don’t think you’re beyond therapy - and I say that as someone who has had to try to figure out how to deal with trauma and someone who has done significant research in this arena. I do think you likely have some very extensive coping mechanisms that are seeking to protect you. And I think it’s possible that you either may not have found the right therapist and/or may not be ready/able to tap into the core of your issues. But this is not to say you will never be ready and/or that therapy can’t work. I genuinely believe it can. Still, maybe taking a break for a bit isn’t a bad thing. Maybe sitting yourself and asking yourself where the walls come from might lead you to new insights and new therapists…
There’s hope for your healing. Don’t let logic and data talk you out of it. We are human - and are so much more than the sum of our inputs. Don’t count out what we can’t quantify. Please don’t stop trying.
I agree with Bb62714 about having to face your deepest fears and scars. I truly believe this is where the healing is.
It is very hard to do this, and takes much courage and persistence. And of course the deeper the trauma, the harder it can be. But it will help even if you can become just a little more vulnerable and open to your deepest feelings - things like anxiety, sadness, anger, loneliness, despair - emotions we all tend to bury because it is painful to face them.
I know you said you didn't want solutions, but at the risk of stepping over that line here are some things that occur to me. The idea that you are beyond help is probably the first hurdle you will need to get past. Set this thought aside if you can. Be open to the possibility that you *can* make improvements in your life and your well-being. Don't make complete recovery or total happiness your goal. Just aim for small improvements, one at a time.
Thank you for your response. I know I have to believe I can. All the trauma screwed up my whole life. Now at 62, I'm to believe things can change. Thats a hard task for me. And I know its one step at a time, so I fear that I will heal sufficiently on my death bed. That's how my mind works.
talk therapy doesn't help for everyone because trauma is trapped in the body. have you looked into EMDR therapy? it's supposed to be a miracle worker actually. it actually heals parts of people's brain through bilateral stimulation. people see change in a short amount of time. there's also this book by peter levine with somatic exercises to help work the trauma out. it comes with guided audio. ill attach a link to it. it's never too late and no one is too far gone. our bodies are designed to help us heal and bounce back. we are incredibly resilient. just gotta find what works for you. yoga is supposed to be great too, something about the deep stretching. here is the book! i hope you are able to heal soon
Listen, I believe you can spend tons of money on therapy for YEARS and never really get anywhere!!! The same with reading all these psychology and self help books. I'm not knocking them, some of them have been very helpful to me. And I've had a couple of therapists that were great with me and got me back on the right track. I'm all therapied out. The bottom line is therapists are not your friends, it is a professional relationship that sooner or later is going to end. The Lord helps those who help themselves. What's really helped me is simply trying to keep a positive attitude no matter what else is going on around me. A really good book I've read that a therapist had me read is Don't Sweat the Small Stuff. One sentence in there that stood out to me is - when someone else throws you the ball, you don't have to catch it. And I don't make a huge effort to try to be popular to win people over. I know not everyone is going to like me, and I don't have to like everyone I meet either. If someone wants to be nasty or snobby towards me, all that's really going on is they want to project their insecurity on to me. I'm not going to let that happen. Let the comments sail. I know who I am and I choose not to be a vicious person. 🦋
I'm not going to rush into a new therapy. I know exactly where there's the block we will eventually come to. All the preliminary work they do with me doesn't overcome this juncture. I cant go any further because of a lifetime of poor behaviors, one on top of another, that has ingrained in me and won't let loose. An avoidant personality disorder of sorts. I do not ever mistake my therapist for a friend. Right now I feel so sick of them. So much money I've spent too. Thanks googoodollsfan.
I am sorry you are going through this . I don't have experience with trauma . I might be clutching at straws . But maybe you have come to the idea / thought that nothing is going to work so you are unconsciously making that prophecy come true .
I hope you are able to make progress and move forward .
I know what you mean . I go into trauma based therapy thinking maybe this time and it never happens. With this last therapist I was cynical from the beginning. So I will abstain until I can figure out what makes sense.I
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Anyone else constantly asking “Who am I?”” 
How does talk therapy help you?
I'm mentally checking out
Ramble on
